Editorial: Personal touches push progress, from the Cold War to today

Monday

Mar 30, 2009 at 12:01 AMMar 30, 2009 at 12:44 PM

It's not often that a former head of state, arguably one of the most important political figures of the 20th century, certainly one of the most powerful people on the planet at one time, and a Nobel Prize winner visit central Illinois, all in the same person.

It's not often that a former head of state, arguably one of the most important political figures of the 20th century, certainly one of the most powerful people on the planet at one time, and a Nobel Prize winner visit central Illinois, all in the same person.

Yet there was former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev on Friday in Eureka, college home of his one-time nemesis and ultimately his friend and fellow world changer, former President Ronald Reagan.

With a resume like that you sort of expect someone of almost mythical stature, yet the 78-year-old Gorbachev that emerged from his vehicle to greet Eureka College President J. David Arnold was short and stocky, the trademark crimson birthmark on his forehead still quite visible. "It looks like everyone in this small town is a photographer," he said as the assembled snapped away. "You haven't prepared the best of weather for us," he noted of the chill. Speaking only Russian, Gorbachev was accompanied by an interpreter who translated his remarks about the surrounding cornfields reminding him of where he grew up. "This is a nice place," he said of the peace garden that bears Reagan's name. After pretty much annual visits to this country over the last 17 years, "I like Americans," he reassured his hosts.

Behind the words were hints of the powerful personality that landed him prominently on the world stage more than 20 years ago - the charm, the humor, the intellect, the stubbornness, and yes the courage of a leader whose reforms of a nation stuck in the past ironically made him more popular in this country than, at the time, in his own.

Yet none of those qualities made as big a difference to the history that the committed capitalist Reagan and the committed communist Gorbachev would alter together as the fundamental humanity the two of them shared, the desire that their children and grandchildren would grow up in a world safer than the Cold War era over which they presided.

"A president is a president, and both of us as leaders were responsible to our nations, and as superpowers responsible to the world," Gorbachev told Eureka students and staff. But their titles were secondary to the fact that "we remained human beings. That is important. That gave us a chance."

Gorbachev repeatedly invoked that theme as he shared a series of anecdotes about the events that changed the globe. They came against the backdrop of a second-term American president who wanted his legacy to be that of a peacemaker, and a Soviet premier who recognized that he ran a country in desperate need of modernization, that had fallen behind other nations despite its superpower status, that could not begin the process of opening itself up to the world ("glasnost") and reinventing itself ("perestroika") without having peaceful relations with other nations, particularly the United States.

Gorbachev recalled their first meeting not being very promising. Asked about the initial impression Reagan had made, Gorbachev responded to his aides, "He is a real dinosaur." Then Reagan got his turn: "Gorbachev is a die-hard Bolshevik," he told advisers. "So that brought us into balance," Gorbachev said.

Their relationship would evolve. "It was difficult. Both of us were men of principle," he said. At one point early on "President Reagan had begun to lecture me." So Gorbachev responded: "Mr. President, you're not a teacher, I'm not a student. You're not a prosecutor. I'm not the accused. ... If you want to work together, we can do it ... but only if our cooperation is that of equals."

Not long thereafter, they would begin greeting each other on a first-name basis. By the end of their first summit, they would issue a joint statement, which read, "A nuclear war can never be won, and must never be fought." They had agreed upon a foundation from which to negotiate, which ultimately would result in the 1987 INF treaty eliminating many nuclear weapons from the arsenals of both nations.

Even when negotiations between them broke down over Reagan's insistence regarding the Strategic Defense Initiative - the so-called "Star Wars" plan - even when their insecurities made them fear they might be making mistakes on behalf of their nations, even when both were being criticized back home, they did not stop talking. "This is not a failure. This is a breakthrough," Gorbachev recalled telling the press at Reykjavik, Iceland.

And so it was. They would find common ground.

"I saw in President Reagan a partner," said Gorbachev, while noting to laughter that, "by the way, he continued to be an actor." Because of that, when Reagan famously said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this (Berlin) wall," the Soviets didn't take him all that seriously. "Of course today, we can joke, we can laugh ... but when all is said and done, he was a great man."

That has to make the folks in Eureka feel good, just as when Gorbachev called the 40th president's alma mater "now my college, too." If Eureka College doesn't have an exchange program with Gorbachev's own Moscow State University, perhaps it should.

The lesson here is that no matter how bleak the situation may seem or how hostile the enemy is perceived to be - the Soviet Union at the time was a far more formidable foe than any America has faced since - "it's the dialogue, sometimes contentious dialogue" that must continue, said Gorbachev.

He acknowledged that relations between Russia and the U.S. have become strained again. After meeting last week with President Barack Obama - who incidentally has taken some heat for his insistence on foreign policy "dialogue" - he believes that can be improved. "Human relationships. That is the essence we must not squander," he said.

The world's enduring mystery is why something so simple remains so profound.